At town halls, Republicans feel the heat from Trump and Musk’s firing and cutting spree

Many members of the House skipped holding large, public events while out of Washington this week. But the Republicans who did hold town halls back home got an earful.

At events from Georgia and Wisconsin to Oklahoma and Oregon, House Republicans faced sometimes-hostile crowds furious about the sweeping budget cuts and mass firings of federal workers that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are carrying out.

With the House on recess and many lawmakers returning to their districts, this week was the first opportunity for them to hear directly from constituents about Trump and Musk’s scorched-earth strategy to cut spending and shrink the federal government’s footprint.

At City Hall in Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta, on Thursday night, attendees jeered and talked over Republican Rep. Rich McCormick as they peppered him with tough questions about the cuts — and the seemingly indiscriminate way some of them are being carried out.

One man asked McCormick how Musk’s DOGE could fire employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which safeguards America’s nuclear weapons, and other federal employees who had been working to combat the bird flu outbreak. More than 1,000 workers also have been laid off from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a major employer in Atlanta.

“Why is the supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?” the man said as the room erupted in applause, according to videos posted on X by Greg Bluestein, a journalist with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a NBC News contributor. 

“A lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI,” responded McCormick, referring to artificial intelligence, a remark that sparked disagreement from the crowd. “I happen to be a doctor. I know a few things, OK?”

“If we continue to grow the size of government, and we can’t afford it, it’s going to have shortfalls in your Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security,” the congressman continued. “We have to make some decisions.”

At the start of the town hall, a woman told McCormick, who represents a safe Republican seat outside Atlanta, that it was Congress’ job to direct and appropriate federal spending, “not the president, and you are doing a disservice to set that down and not stand up for us.”

Many of these issues “will be litigated in court,” McCormick said, prompting more jeers.

“But we’re pissed!” another attendee yelled out.

The contentious town halls could be an early sign of political backlash to come for elected Republicans as thousands of federal workers around the country begin getting pink slips and Americans start to feel the impact, as the GOP-controlled Congress largely yields to Trump and Musk.  

One Republican lawmaker said it appeared that constituents who’ve been “quiet” since Joe Biden’s 2020 victory are back out in force.

“Too much too fast seems to be a common refrain,” the lawmaker continued. “Need to review each program, department or agency first and then make calculated decisions. But generally frustrated right now by lack of clarity.”

Some House Republicans hosted virtual or tele-town halls, which can be moderated more easily. But at the few in-person town halls around the country this week, GOP lawmakers were on the defensive as they were quizzed about the mass firings and potential future cuts to Medicaid.

In West Bend, Wisconsin, GOP Rep. Scott Fitzgerald faced several tough questions at a town hall Thursday, including from attendee Michael Wittig, who was holding a sign reading, “Presidents are not kings.”

“Are you going to subpoena him at some point? Are you willing to use your subpoena power to tell Musk to stand in front of Congress and answer some hard questions?” Wittig asked, according to a report from WTMJ, the NBC News affiliate in Milwaukee. 

That same question came up in Glenpool, Oklahoma, where attendees told Rep. Kevin Hern, a member of GOP leadership, that he wasn’t doing his job standing up to the executive branch. “We’re seeing the administration undermining Congress,” a mother with a baby in her lap told Hern, according to News9 in Oklahoma City. “Will you call Elon Musk in to testify under oath to explain what he’s doing?” asked another attendee.

At a town hall in Baker City, Oregon, a man who identified himself as Terry Strommer, a military veteran from Oxbow, told GOP Rep. Cliff Bentz that his office had been unresponsive when he raised concerns about Musk.

“I’ll just ask you, if you think that he’s doing it right. Would you like all of your private records revealed and pulled up by a bunch of people that weren’t elected, they’re just randomly appointed, a bunch of 20-year-olds?” the man said. “I know that when I was in the service, there was a chain of command and we answered to somebody. I don’t see him answering to anybody.”

Bentz defended Musk, calling him “an absolute world-renowned expert” who could overhaul the government’s “antiquated systems.” Some in the crowd laughed at Bentz’s description. 

And back in Wisconsin, attendees confronted GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman about potential cuts in Trump and congressional Republicans’ spending plans.

Asked whether cuts to Social Security or Medicaid would push him to oppose a GOP spending bill, Grothman said, “Well, certainly if Social Security is cut, and Medicaid, we’ll have to see about that.”

The raucous town halls conjured memories of those in 2009 — the start of the tea party movement — when constituents protested over Democrats’ massive health care bill, which became the Affordable Care Act.

The next year, a red wave gave House Republicans a staggering 63-seat gain and swept Democrats out of power. Democrats hope that the palpable frustration could be an accelerant for them in next year’s midterms, though the specifics of the modern House battlefield, shaped by two rounds of precise redistricting since 2010, make the kind of tsunami Republicans rode then hard to replicate.

At this juncture, some Republicans are also questioning just how deep the backlash in these congressional town halls runs.

“I love how the media takes a few critics when the overwhelming response from the American people is support for what this administration is doing,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in response to questions from NBC News.

She added: “There should be no secret about the fact that this administration is committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse. The president campaigned on that promise. Americans elected him on that promise, and he’s actually delivering on it. And this is something that Democrats promised they would do for decades.”

Still, a Republican strategist on the front lines of the tea party wave said he sees early glimmers of a similar phenomenon now, with the GOP facing voter anger over the economic situation the same way the Democratic trifecta did in 2009.

“The Republican mandate coming out of the 2024 election was pretty clear: Tackle the rising cost of living in America,” said Ken Spain, who served as communications director for the House Republican campaign arm in 2009 and 2010. “As exciting as it may be for the Republican base, most voters don’t naturally make a connection between aggressively cutting the size of the federal workforce and their pocketbooks.”

Spain also said Republicans still have time to avoid getting swamped like Democrats did in 2010.

“We’re one month into the new administration, so it’s too early to start drawing immediate parallels to the tea party protests of 2009, but Republicans must pivot to connecting the dots between their actions and the tangible economic benefits for the working class,” Spain said. “Otherwise, the echoes of 2009 could become increasingly louder.”

Narrow majorities of American adults in polling from CNN and The Washington Post/Ipsos said they believe Trump has overstepped as president.

Both polls also found a majority disagreeing with his attempts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. And the Post’s poll found that 58% opposed his efforts to lay off large numbers of federal government workers.

Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked on House races during the Obama era, said he sees parallels to the 2018 cycle, when Trump’s party faced a backlash in the midterms.

“Republicans are taking heat cause people feel like things are out-of-control and see the GOP as becoming responsible for the problem instead of being part of the solution,” he said. “When life feels out of control, the last thing you want is Trump and Musk chainsawing apart everything you depend on.”

“In 2010, Democrats felt the backlash from owning a bad status quo, and in 2018, Republicans felt the backlash for trying to take important things away,” Ferguson said. “In 2025, Republicans are managing to do both.”

One outstanding political question is whether voters take any frustration over those actions out on largely powerless Democrats, too.

Stuck in the minority in Congress, House and Senate Democrats have been protesting the firings and cuts, holding rallies and in some cases confronting security personnel outside federal agency buildings around Washington. But some Democrats are also feeling the heat from constituents who urged them to fight harder against Musk’s DOGE efforts.

At a packed town hall in Albany, New York, a man told Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko that he had watched the congressman on TV protesting the cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Education. But he called on Tonko to do more because Musk and Republicans “are not playing by the rules.”

“If you ask us to show up, Congressman Tonko, we will show up. … We have to take it to them,” the man said, according to a video posted on Facebook. When he turned on the TV, “I was so proud that my representative was on the front line. But I thought about Jimmy Carter and I thought about John Lewis, and I know what John Lewis would have done. He would have gotten arrested that day.

“Make them outlaw you,” he continued as the applause grew louder. “We will stand behind you, we will be there with you. I will get arrested with you.”